On the other end of the competence spectrum is Sven Vollfied, a down-on-his luck "sweeper," or bounty hunter, who won't deign to go after small targets, but doesn't have much luck with the bigger ones, either—he tends to let his "chivalry" distract him, so he winds up spending most of his time broke, trying to cadge free food, listening to his stomach grumble and worrying about whether he'll be able to afford his next cigarette fix.

Sven isn't as useless as he may appear—he has a wide range of impressively flexible and creative weapons built into the briefcase he carries everywhere, and weirdly, he has the power to see five minutes into the future with one "viewing eye," which he normally covers with an eyepatch, because using it drains his strength. But as the series starts, his attempt to arrest a gangster politician is foiled when Black Cat beats him to the punch and kills the target, and his next prey evades him without trying, as Sven is distracted by a damsel in distress.

That girl, Rinslet Walker, actually wants to trick Sven into helping her retrieve a dangerous biological weapon in the form of a small blond girl named Eve. But again, Black Cat's presence foils Sven's efforts. Coincidentally, Sven encounters Eve in a park later; when he learns she's essentially a naïve child, emotionless and inexperienced, his heart goes out to her. Unfortunately, Black Cat still has her targeted, and he never misses a target. On the other hand, he's been having his own encounters with a flirtatious sweeper named Minatsuki Saya, and her perspective on life is changing his.

Yes, we heard you say that already

These first four installments in Black Cat's 23-episode run barely start the story; they tend to circle around and repeatedly cover the same ground, especially once Eve enters the picture and Sven keeps telling himself that she's just a little girl, and that Train is out to kill her, and other things we already know. This first disc isn't paced for forward momentum, which is a pity, given how well things move when they are moving. Train in particular travels across rooms in beautiful streaks of motion, fading into a lethal blur that's eerie as well as deadly. Overall, it's a very well-animated series.

It's also an intriguing one, thanks to one of those themeless, all-inclusive worlds where it's never certain what's going to pop up next: a vampirelike serial killer whose hands spout acid, a lab full of nanotech monstrosities, cat-summoning bombs ... there's no telling whether a given fighter will be carrying a gun or an orichalcum spear, and while that makes Black Cat feel pretty random, it's also neatly unpredictable. And with characters this cut-and-dried, that kind of unpredictability is a must.

As far as those characters go, most of them don't have much personality yet; Rinslet and Saya are underdeveloped, Train is pointedly opaque, and the bad guys are repetitive stooges—particularly Eve's owner, whose dialogue is mostly limited to constantly telling her that she's a prey-killing demon. (Or, in the subtitled version, that she's playing tag and that whoever he wants killed is "it.") Only Sven feels three-dimensional, thanks to his ego, his strange predictive power, his bizarre weapons and his constant harping on being a gentleman. All of which adds up to a big bowl of quirk rather than a consistent protagonist, but at least he's never dull. (Except when he's repeating himself.)

Many of the villains and plots that will be significant down the line are glimpsed briefly in these first episodes, but this is the kind of series where it'd be more satisfying to wait for the second disc, due out shortly, and watch a long run of the show instead of just this first teaser.